FL Pastors Get Legal Protection If Refusing to Preform Gay ‘Marriages’

I wrote about it last week [blog posting for March 16 – “FL Legislature Seeks to Protect Churches Refusing Gay Marriages”].  Pastors in Florida are now legally protected from potential lawsuits if they refuse to perform same-sex ‘marriages.’

FL Governor Rick Scott (R) recently signed into law HB 43, known as the “Pastor Protection Act.”  It protects clergy, churches, and religious organizations and their employees from civil action if they choose not to perform a wedding for homosexual couples.

FL Rep. Scott Plakon, who sponsored HB 43, said, “The law provides that churches or religious organizations, related organizations, or certain individuals may not be required to solemnize any marriage or provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods, or privileges for related purposes if such action would violate sincerely held religious beliefs,” according to a news release from Liberty Counsel.  (A similar law has been adopted in both Texas and Georgia.)

Liberty Counsel’s Matt Staver said, “I am pleased that the Pastor Protection Act is now law in Florida.  However, more protections are needed beyond just pastors and churches performing weddings.”  He continued, “We should pass broad legislation that protects the religious freedom and conscience of all people who refuse to be conscripted into service of the so-called LGBT agenda.”  Staver went on to say, “This assault on marriage is really an attempt to obliterate Judeo-Christian morality, to destroy marriage and family, and is an attack on God who created male and female.”

I absolutely agree, and have stated many times, that gay ‘marriage’ isn’t the real end-all; it’s merely a means to the end.  The LGBT agenda is far, far more.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel